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It was experiencing the horrors so profoundly, then having that weight lifted, that made life in this strange new London easy. There were terrible things, but they weren’t hunting her. Compared to everything else, Jack was a wonderful hardship.
Sam was trickier. What had been a means to an end had become something else, more than a desperate plan made while lying in bed, trying not to teleport away even as her toes buzzed, her body gravitated towards that singular point of damnation. He reminded her of a world she hardly remembered.
“You’re beautiful,” he’d breathed, fingers twining through her mussed hair as he tidied the strands on her pillow, as if she were a mermaid crowned by sea-locks. She hummed, her pleasure a painful knot in her chest. It hurt, but hurt was not fear.
Muscle memory had propelled her from the terror at Hilltop Centre. Her legs were used to running from horrible things; her ears were used to ignoring the cries of the watched. She was wholly suited to escaping something awful—and for discarding heroism for survival. Even though the tear remained after Sam and the Archivist plunged through, she wouldn’t follow.
Shame would come later. Sadness, too. But regret…
She fell asleep to the metronome of Jack’s gentle breathing.
Celia blinked, not quite sure of where she was.
There wasn’t a blank spot in her memory, like the time after her who had been plucked away by scalpel-fingered creatures. It was an everyday, ordinary confusion. The last thing she recalled was being taken away by the Eye’s servants.
Where am I?
This place was ordinary, frighteningly so. Her heart pounded at the incongruity of unseeing streetlights and blinded windows, a sky full of stars but empty of eyes. The impossibility felt so much like a trap that her muscles stiffened to rebar. She stood unmoving, at least until she heard a voice.
“Miss?”
Reality distortion? she thought. A monkey’s paw domain where things seemed all right until they went thoroughly pear-shaped.
The voice continued, “Don’t you know it’s dangerous at night?”
It’s always dangerous, she thought.
Celia’s eyes flicked to the man in the alleyway, taking in his slumped posture and wrinkled mouth. A servant of the Web, limbs pulled tight against a bowed body? A mannequin of the Flesh covered in old skin?
“Miss?” said the man again.
As he stepped closer, Celia was mute for the tightness in her throat. In domains, fear was so powerful that it was hard to distinguish between a watcher’s whims and pure, human terror. The man might be doing this, or it might be a betrayal of her body. Either way, she needed to run.
“I’m calling 999,” he announced, holding up a phone. He began to tap its screen, three tones echoing before a tinny ring came from the speaker, then connected.
Celia could see the cold circle of the phone’s eye staring at her as he held it to his ear. Its gaze unfroze her, let her breath rattle into a groan. Her thoughts stuttered as she stepped forward. She grabbed the phone and slammed it to the concrete below.
“The hell—” the man began, but that was how some ensnared you. Compelling words, ones that drove you mad with your own anxieties. He couldn’t speak after Celia’s quick jabs, one to the throat and one to the chest, and then there was blessed quiet as he lay on the ground, limbs splayed wide, broken like a puppet with its strings cut.
Mannequin, then? She stared at his prone form, considering. For a watcher, he wasn’t very powerful. Someone else, controlling from afar.
If this was a false reality, and the domain’s servants appeared weak, then it was likely one of deception. Not the reality-bending nightmares she’d been through, but something subtler. When she turned around, she once more went rigid, this time from the shock of the crumbling sign attached to the broken, soot-covered wall.
The Magnus Institute.
The very words left her dizzy and breathless. She slumped, her breaths panicky and the air so, so thin. It took a moment to realize she was having a panic attack, and with that knowledge came—well, not calm. She couldn’t be calm, sitting in this impossible place. But at least she knew what she had to do.
See, hear, touch, smell, taste. She worked her way through her senses, all the while thinking of how they couldn’t be trusted, not in an unfamiliar domain. Everything felt hyperreal, from the slight echo of her breath on stone to the stink of the garbage collecting along the stairwell in front of her.
It was the bad taste in her mouth that finally grounded her.
And then came sirens.
They had no supernatural qualities, no persistent ringing or banshee wail that burst her eardrums, but they were terrifying all the same. She ran up, then away, and she didn’t stop running even when the horrors didn’t follow. The sirens grew louder, then quieter, until they disappeared altogether.
Buildings flew past, then roads and dirt and grass and stone. Everything looked strange. She wasn’t sure how she had the energy to keep running, now that she’d begun to consider that this might not be a domain at all. A deep part of her recognized it as what a city should look like, absent an apocalypse. Her now and then warred inside her, memories just out of reach.
There’s an Eye, she thought, staring at the cameras at the corners of streets and buildings.
There’s a Stranger, she thought, passing a person in tattered layers, formless but for the eyes that peeked out from messy hair.
(The woman-who-was-not-Celia said, “London has always had cameras. And that’s a homeless man, really.”)
Celia must have run for nearly an hour. She slowed once her vision spotted from lack of air, leaning against a building, gasping. A few curious eyes looked at her, and although it was uncomfortable, she realized that it didn’t feel like being Watched so much as watched. She wasn’t sure what to make of it.
“Hello?”
Another man’s voice. Her neck cracked for the force of her head slamming up, looking for the speaker and half-expecting to see the old man from before. The voice was younger, though, and so was the man. He wore a coat and nice scarf, which made Celia realize how underdressed she was in her light shirt and pants.
“Hi,” she said. It came out more as a croak than a greeting.
“Are you…” he began. She waited for the “all right,” but she supposed she didn’t look it. “Do you need help?”
Did she? Most likely. She was always needing rescue these days, and the thought set her teeth on edge. She shook her head. “I’m f-fine.”
“F-fine?” the man repeated, although he softened it with a smile.
“I’m fine, thank you.”
“If you say so.” When he looked her up and down, she wasn’t sure if he was looking at her sorry state or if he was…flirting? Who flirts in the apocalypse? “If it turns out you’re not so fine after all,” he continued, holding up his phone, “you could call me.”
“I, er, don’t have a mobile.”
“Really?” He looked intrigued, and she felt his eyes on her again, watching but not Watching. It was another bit of evidence supporting the idea that she was away from the Eye. “Well, then, how’s about I give you the address to my flat?”
“…All right.”
What else could she say? If this was truly not her London, then she didn’t belong. And not belonging was a danger she couldn’t afford.
Always being rescued, that Celia. Her thoughts were mocking. A part of her hated what she was about to do.
“Actually,” she said, and the man looked up from rummaging in his pockets for paper, “why don’t we head there now?”
The man couldn’t hide his surprise. As he led her on, she began to talk about an accident and how she had lost her memory…
Celia awoke to Jack crying. For the briefest second, she thought of his father, then wondered why. It’s not like he was in the picture anymore.
“Jack,” she said. “Sweetheart.”
She allowed muscle memory to carry her to the kitchen. Her head was pounding as she leaned against the counter, trying to ignore the wailing in the other room. She started a kettle to make herself a cup of tea and to warm Jack’s bottle. Even though he’d been transitioning to solids, milk helped if he woke up fussy. She’d probably need to stop bottle-feeding soon. It would make change harder.
We all need comfort, she thought, staring at the kettle’s blue light. She shoved memories of soft, gentle hands from her mind.
As the kettle heated, she thought of dreams. Everyone who’d been in a domain had them, but Celia never remembered hers. Some of the watched were unable to hold on to memories—mostly the Spiral-touched, or in Flesh domains with a neurological component. Although Celia knew she dreamed, the memories of her sleeping mind disappeared upon waking. Lucky, if what others had told her was true.
Still, what had haunted her sleep that day? Had she been dreaming of her domain, of that blinding washed-out horror show filled with sharp cuts that tore her very self apart? What else could she have been dreaming of?
Lost in thought, she barely heard the kettle’s whistle. Water hissed as it boiled over, dribbling hot water from its spout and onto the countertop. Damn cheap thing. She swore and unplugged it. After the bubbles settled, she poured some water into a mug with a sachet of herbal tea, then some into a bowl. She set Jack’s bottle inside.
“Like a little boat,” Sam marvelled.
“Shit,” she breathed. There was the shame. “Sam.” There was the sadness.
“I don’t know much,” he added. “This is all new to me.”
But as Celia squeezed a drop of milk on her wrist, checking that it was not too hot and not too cold, she couldn’t feel regret. She headed back to the bedroom, bottle in hand.
“Jackie-Jack,” she said, waltzing up to his crib and lifting him up, cradling him in her arms. She rocked him up and down, and his cries began to settle. Afraid, hungry—or maybe just craving connection. He was a new thing, making sense of a new world. Celia could relate.
After he ate and she changed him out of his messy clothes, she settled him back into his crib. Luckily, he slept so often that her nocturnal schedule made little difference. She picked up the phone and dialled Georgie.
“I’m on route,” came the response from the other end of the line.
Celia relaxed a fraction. “He’s just had some warm milk.”
“So he’ll be sleepy, sweet boy.”
“He’ll need real food at some point,” Celia said. As she considered her meagre food supplies, the tension started creeping back into her shoulders. “I think I have something jarred in the cupboards, or maybe, er—”
“You have that pureed parsnip,” Georgie said, cutting in. “We’ll make do.”
“But…”
“It’s fine, really. Stop worrying and get ready for that mysterious job of yours.”
She sighed. “All right. See you soon.”
She turned back to her son. Jack was curled up, a little comma as he lay on his side. She wondered if she needed to reposition him to his back. He was past that age, though, surely? After a moment’s hesitation, she turned him over, just in case.
Celia watched his chest rise and fall. She watched until he was safe, then began to gather her things. She’d head to the office after Georgie arrived. In the meantime, she needed to rehearse what to say about Sam—and about herself.
Who was the Celia of this world? She’d need to figure it out soon.
“There was an accident, you see,” she muttered, “over at Hilltop Centre…”